HONDURAS: Military Accused of Conspiracy and Corruption

By Thelma Mejía Reprint | | Print |

Thelma Mejia

TEGUCIGALPA, Oct 3 1997 (IPS) - The armed forces of Honduras have launched a public campaign to clean up their image, tainted by allegations of corruption and participation in two assassination attempts against President Carlos Reina.

On Friday, the Day of the Soldier, which commemorates the birth of Central American independence leader Honduran General Francisco Morazan, the army, navy and air forces exhibited their tanks, machine guns and airplanes.

TV spots calling for solidarity and patriotism are part of the campaign to clean up the military’s image, which suffered a hard blow when a reporter with the U.S. daily Miami Herald pointed to a conspiracy between the Honduran military and anti-Castro Cuban exiles, on which he blamed the 1994 and 1995 attacks against Reina and 25 bombings in the past two years.

Investigative journalist Juan Tamayo cited sources with the Honduran military, business sector and government advisers to substantiate his report on the complicity of Honduran officers with Cuban exiles in the attacks against the president.

The attorney-general’s office in Honduras said it planned to investigate the newspaper’s “interesting” revelations.

According to Tamayo, the officers were seeking to check the demilitarisation process initiated by Reina, while the Cuban exiles wanted to curb Honduras’ diplomatic detente with Cuba.

The link between the two groups was allegedly established by Colonel Guillermo Pinel, then chief of the armed forces and today inspector general of the army, and Cuban exile Mario Delamico, an arms-runner.

For the assassination attempts, Delamico recruited Luis Posadas, a Cuban who had previously collaborated with the U.S. Central Intelligence Agency (CIA), said Tamayo.

Posadas, who reportedly lives in Tegucigalpa and San Salvador, is wanted by Cuba’s intelligence services for the late 1970s bombing of an airplane in Venezuela, in which a number of Cubans were killed.

The members of the alliance sought the cooperation of a conservative business group, in the interests of destabilising the Reina administration and ensuring the armed forces a tighter grip on power, the report maintained.

According to documents declassified by the U.S. Drug Enforcement Administration (DEA), to which IPS had access, Colonel Pinel was trained in intelligence and “police brutality,” and is suspected of killing then-Spanish ambassador to Honduras Manuel Medrano in March 1987.

In a communique released Thursday, Pinel denied the allegations, which he said were part of a “smear campaign” against the armed forces.

But in contrast to the armed forces which have tried to discredit the Miami Herald article, President Reina said the reports must be investigated because Tamayo “is a well-known investigative journalist who lives in Miami and knows the crime he would be committing” by writing unsubstantiated reports.

The president said “I prefer to believe that the attempted bombings against me do not reflect the spirit of the armed forces,” but of someone within the institution.

On another front, the office of the treasury inspector plans to audit the armed forces, in order to investigate how the military budget is spent. It will also launch probes into reports of illicit enrichment by several officers.

Treasury inspector Vera Rubi said the lifestyles of many officers were not in line with their salaries.

Armed forces spokesman Colonel Mario Villegas said the Miami Herald allegations and the investigations by the treasury inspector were part of “an orchestrated smear campaign against the armed institution and its members.

“Reports on illicit enrichment must be proven in the courts. Although the military are not chemically pure, it is not true that the entire institution is tainted by shady acts,” he added.